Question

Read the poem:

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee

Where does the tone shift in the poem?

Answer 1

The tone shifts in the last two lines.

Answer 2

The poem kicks off on a high note, with a tonality of vigour, energy and beauty. However, by the third line, the tonality of the poem shifts to one of solemness and ethereality with a tint of gloominess.

Notice words like

summer's day (Line 1)

lovely, temperate (Line 2)

And then in lines 3,4,5 we have words such as

rough winds, summer's lease....too short, too hot.

See also the in the 4th before the last line, the poet uses words such as death and wand'rest, thus giving it a 'cloudy' ending.

Cheers!